(Credits: Alamy)
Wed 25 February 2026 20:00, UK
Joni Mitchell is one of those few artists that most bands should really leave alone.
Most of her songs are already perfect just the way they are, and no matter how many times people have tried to take her tunes in different directions, she is one of the ultimate examples of the phrase ‘no one sings a song better than its writer’. There have certainly been some decent renditions of her tunes throughout the years, but there are many times when things can go awfully awry when someone doesn’t have the right idea.
Then again, the ones that truly understood what they were doing when covering Mitchell’s material usually benefited from taking it in a different direction. The original version of the song ‘Woodstock’ is still one of the most beautiful sombre ballads of her career, but by putting an electrified guitar riff below everything, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young were one of the few bands that truly understood what it meant. If Mitchell’s version captured the melancholy of not being able to go to the festival, this version was from the perspective of those on the ground floor watching everyone tune in and drop out.
Compare that with, let’s say, Counting Crows doing their own version of ‘Big Yellow Taxi’. Yes, the song is decently performed, and Adam Duritz is adding his own signature spice to the whole thing, but even with everything sounding perfect, it practically misses the point entirely. That tune is all about trying to find beauty in a world that embraces the natural side of life, so to have everything sequenced and giving it the same pop sheen that bands like Backstreet Boys were used to wasn’t exactly what the song had in mind.
But if there was any song that Mitchell felt needed to be given away to somebody else, it was ‘Both Sides Now’. She had written a song that could stand alongside some of the greatest standards of all time, but since the lyrics were being spoken by someone who had already seen everything that life has to offer, it wasn’t exactly the best idea for her to be singing the tune while she was still in her 20s. Not everyone was going to believe that, but giving it away to Frank Sinatra wasn’t the best idea, either.
Sinatra never gave a bad performance of any of the songs he was given, but when listening to his version, Mitchell felt that the schlocky arrangement behind him made the whole thing virtually unlistenable, saying, “‘Both Sides Now’ I think is better sung by someone in their 50’s or 60’s reflecting back on their life, speaking theatrically. But poor Frank, though. They gave him this terrible arrangement – it was all wrong for him. And on the album cover he has his hand over his face and he’s sitting on the curb. And I felt for him. I thought I would love if we do a tribute album if they would get a really good arranger rather than trying to make a folk-rocker out of Frank.”
That’s not even the first time that someone messed up one of Sinatra’s takes on a rock and roll star. ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’ didn’t really have time for rock and roll during his prime, but his version of Paul Simon’s tunes had the same kind of effect on Simon when he heard how the crooner had mutilated some of his classics.
But maybe that’s what drove Mitchell to eventually redo her tune years after the fact. Sinatra was still one of the greatest to ever sing in popular music, but when Mitchell tried her hand at ‘Both Sides Now’ well after the fact, it felt like she had finally matured into the kind of person who lived a full life and could speak some real truth when talking about looking at the world from every different angle.
It may have taken a little while for ‘Both Sides Now’ to get its due, but it’s not like any of the versions are necessarily bad by any stretch. Each of them is competently played and has at least something tasteful about them, but the final version that Mitchell has always been the most authentic version that you will ever hear.